Essays

When the author and her wife learned their 18-month-old needed open heart surgery, it proved to be one of the most terrifying moments of their lives—and, to their surprise, uniquely life affirming.

Blended religious families share their holiday traditions.

Queer parents on the questions they're constantly getting.

How humiliating to think that I would need letters of reference and a judge to officially deem me qualified to be something that I already was: a mother.

I asked other queer parents how they're talking to their kids about anti-lgbtq legislation.

As a same-sex couple, my wife and I want our sons to be proud of unconventional families. We want them to know it's OK to be different.

We want to encourage them to ask questions instead of feeling shamed.

This 1995 coming-of-age movie helped shape me into who I am today.

I carried our first child, and my wife carried our second — a perk of our two-uterus marriage. As her belly grew, so did my apprehension. Could I love this baby as much as the one I birthed?

Women are expected to minimize our trauma and love our scars. Ten years after the writer suffered a hit-and-run accident that took her ear, she realized she didn't have to embrace expectation.

For LGBTQ+ parents, finding a community of other queer families can be a vital source of support and camaraderie.

Being open about harmless outside attractions is a potentially hot way to feel closer to each other.

There’s occasional drama within these groups, but that’s a social media norm. For the most part, it’s a virtual place where many of us turn to connect with family, friends and even strangers.

My toddler likes to play games with a mommy and a daddy. I'm okay with that.

I was reluctant to connect with my son's donor siblings because I didn't think of them as family.

When I first fell for another woman, my journal gave me a space to spell out my queer identity in ways I otherwise couldn't.

In our 20s, June meant boozy brunches and PDAs. Now married with a child, we celebrate in a different way, and with greater purpose.

It's tricky enough navigating language with a toddler without the complications of queer parenthood. But no matter what he calls us or how he comes to understand our family is different, I just want him to know he's loved.

How becoming a mom taught me that I didn't need to be selfless to be a good parent.

Because I birthed our baby, society sees me as the "mom" and her as my "sidekick." But she's the mother I've always dreamed my son could have.

We delete the emails. We tear up during the commercials. We face milestones in our lives without her mother.

I'd been warned that birth plans — like the best laid plans — often go awry.

As same-sex parents we must remain visible.

People ask the weirdest questions and say the strangest things.

GOP candidates Donald Trump and Mike Pence’s extreme anti-abortion views made this lesbian writer truly appreciate the distinction between being “pro-life” and “pro-choice.”

Laura Leigh Abby knew that she and her wife, Sam, couldn't have a baby who was half of each of them, but she didn't anticipate how tricky picking a sperm donor would actually be.

Five years ago today I was the victim of a hit-and-run, but what does that mean to me now?

True Life: I had my eggs tested for reality TV.

It's nice that celebrities are opening up about infertility, but what's it like for the rest of us?

I spent most of my 20s living in New York City, a metropolis that fed me (too much), broke me, revived me, and shaped me. NYC is one of the great loves of my life, and as I prepare to leave it for a new phase of my life, I can’t help but reflect on how the city changed me.

Is coming out to your family during the holiday season right for you?

I was 19 when I met my wife, but it took another decade before I got comfortable with words like "lesbian" and "bisexual."

While my wife’s mother lay dying in a hospital, her animals lived alone in her house.Tell people more about this item. Give people the info they need to go ahead and take the action you want. To make this item your own, click here.

When my wife Samantha and I decided to be filmed for a reality television series — Newlyweds: The First Year on Bravo — we worried about the reaction of the lesbian community. Will they accept us? we wondered.

I lost my left ear in an accident almost four years ago. Only recently have I been able to feel like myself again.

I've learned that I can't complain about narrow-mindedness in others if I'm displaying it myself.

Sometimes city life pushes us too hard, hard enough that we push back with the worst versions of ourselves.

Choosing a new name was going to be a compromise.

Not for a moment did I worry that my family would cast me out. Sadly, this isn't the case for most gay people, and I am grateful that I was so fortunate.

Two brides-to-be carve out our own traditions.

When people ask how Sam and I met, I almost never tell them the entire story – that I was Sam’s big sister in a sorority. I still feel ashamed of that detail, as if I did something wrong by falling for her, or I took advantage of her in some way. So I keep my answer simple. I tell them we met in college.

Two years before we were married, my wife Sam watched her mom die.

At Sam’s mom’s funeral I sat in the front pew with the family. Of course I did. Her mother was my family, too. Or at least she was supposed to be.

Just over a month before I entered the graduate writing program at The New School I was struck by a car as I stepped into a crosswalk on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

When I picked up Caitlin Doughty’s debut memoir "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory"—now a New York Times bestseller—my eyes widened. I was eager to learn her secrets of a new and different way of thinking, one in which it’s okay to talk about dying.

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As a queer woman, I have long disliked the Duggars for using fame to push an agenda of intolerance.